GUIDE TO THE ACTION BANDS
With the right frequencies programmed into your scanner,
you can monitor exciting events. With a little investigation,
you
can
find active frequencies
in
your community.
We
can
give you some general pointers, and you can take
it
from
there. Please
use
caution and common sense when you
hear an emergency call. Never go to the scene of
an
emer-
gency -
it
could be the most dangerous thing you could
ever
do
.
Find out if there is a local club that monitors your
community's frequencies. Perhaps, a local electronics
repair shop that works on equipment similar to your scan-
ner can give you channel frequencies
used
by local radio
services. A volunteer police or fire employee can also be a
good source of this information.
As
a general rule on
VHF,
most activity concentrates be-
tween
153.785 and 155.98 MHz and then again from
153.73 to 159.46 MHz. Here you find local government,
police, fire, and most such emergency services. If you are
near a railroad yard or major railroad tracks, look around
160.0 to 161.9 for signals.
In
some larger cities there
has
been a move to the UHF
bands for emergency services. Here, most of the activity
is
in
a spread of 453.025-453.95 MHz and again between
456.025-459.95 MHz.
In
the UHF band, mobile units and control units associated
with base and repeater units occur
in
the overall spreads of
456.025-459.95
and
465.025-469.975.
The
repeater units
operate
5 MHz lower (that
is,
451.025-454.95 and 460.025-
464.975
MHz) than the base units. This means that if you
find an active frequency inside one of these spreads, you
can
look 5 MHz lower (or higher, as the case may
be)
to
find that radio service.
A new
technology
is
now available that allows the
use
of
the
800 MHz band for many services. Some public safety
agencies use trunked radio, introduced to business sys-
tems
in
1979. With as many
as
twenty channels available,
the transmitter automatically selects
an
unused channel
each time it
is
activated. Several agencies
can
share such
a system without causing interference. This system
can
also
be
programmed to provide secure communications
for selected units, with unselected units unable to hear the
message.
Frequencies
in
different bands are accessible only at
specific intervals. However, the frequencies that you can
store into your scanner's memory are
in
5
kHz,
12.5
kHz,
or
50
kHz steps. Your scanner automatically rounds the
entered frequency down to the nearest valid frequency. For
example, if you try to enter a frequency of
151.473, your
scanner accepts this entry as
151.470.
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